Start by picking a crowded topic

In other words, if you want to open a restaurant, put it where there are already plenty of people who want exactly what you offer. If you’re creating a digital business, choose a niche that lots and lots of people want to know more about.

Why are there so many blogs about technology, weight loss, marketing, and celebrities?

Because there are millions of people who want to read about those topics every day.

While you may want to find a little niche that you can completely own, there are two problems with making yourself a big fish in a small pond.

You’ll always be looking over your shoulder for some punk kid to come along and beat you at your own game.

When you choose a tiny topic, you set a limit on how big — and profitable — you’ll ever be able to get.

Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded

If just picking a “me-too” topic was enough, everyone would have a successful website.

But it’s hard to stand out.

It’s relatively easy to rank in the search engines for “naked mole rats.” It’s damned hard to get a page-one ranking for “weight loss” or “learn forex trading.”

Instead of being a big fish in a small pond, allow me to suggest another approach.

Be a small, ridiculously evolved, very rare and weird fish in a great big pond.

A weight loss blog is going to be hard to pull off. A weight loss blog for polyamorous computer programmers of color is going to find its audience pretty efficiently — and the community of readers might be bigger than you think.

The peculiar way you talk or walk or think. The jokes no one else thinks are funny. Your nerdy obsessions. The fact that you are a gigantic dork. Your tragic inability to say the appropriate thing at the appropriate time.

The fact that you care more than anyone you know.

There will be a fair number of people interested in your topic who also resonate with your particular brand of weirdness. And that weirdness will shine like a little beacon to attract them.

Markets are, often as not, defined by who they aren’t.

If you can get weird enough, you’ll find the readers who are longing to be part of your thing.

It’s not about you, and it’s totally about you

If you can learn to keep both of these in your head at the same time, you’ll do brilliantly.

Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone was a founding partner of Copyblogger Media. She works with a select handful of clients on business-building content at Remarkable Communication. Several times a year, she also leads a creative writing workshop for content creators, marketers, and business writers.

Reader Comments (103)

Great advice too! One of my favorite articles on Copyblogger to date. In a sense, “getting weirder” is also about being more authentic. About letting out all the stuff that you’ve been holding inside because it’s “unprofessional” or “socially unacceptable.” I think we’re starting to realize how socially acceptable things really are – when you find the right social group. Or, even better, when they find you.

Very good insight into what effective niche marketing is and is not. A good niche is carving out a slice of a popular topic. It’s not re-inventing a topic altogether. Cater to a specific group, do it better than others that cover the topic more broadly, and you’ll develop a loyal (and sometimes rabid) following…

Love it, great advice. Choosing a big niche with lots of people and traffic, and then finding a sub-niche within the bigger one is how I’ve been able to become somewhat successful on my blog. Now i just need to work on being weirder. 😉

The thing about being weird is that you have to be authentic. Being weird just to capture an audience will most likely not get you were you want to go and you will tire of ‘the act’. Transparency and authenticity are key.

The trick would be to embrace you own weirdness so that you can connect with others that are like you. The more helpful you can make that weirdness the better off you are.

Eventually you will meet enough people that are similar that you will realize you weren’t even weird.

It’s an interesting decision, whether to go for the small, obscure niches or a particular niche in a bigger one. Competition is likely to happen either way. But including your personality gives you so much advantage in terms of memorability.

Then there’s the all your eggs in one basket bit that people worry about. But overall it’s a matter of figuring out which way works best for the way you work and market.

What if you’re the “recovering” video game addict with a nearly pathological need to put the other person first who has a cynical, but strangely positive view toward authority teachers… is there a niche for that?

This post is awesome. I hate to be “that guy,” but this post felt like it was written just for me.

I’ve been trying very hard to stay out of the huge niches because they are crowded and hard to make a splash, but they are also where my passion lies. Amazing advice.

Sonia, this post is pure gold. I tried the empty niche thing and it didn’t work. I have much greater success in already crowded markets. I think from there it is simply a matter of identifying yourself and what makes you stand out. It might seem obvious to others, but it might not to you. That’s where I think a consulting session might come in handy.

@Lee, that’s a good point. A line I almost put in the post and took out was “weird is just another word for honest.” I left it out because that was another whole set of ideas to unpack (and slowly I am learning to keep to more or less one idea per post) 😉 but it’s part of this.

This is right on, although I hate to read it. Was one who thought tight niches were the way to grow blog, but was wrong. Our most popular posts are not the heavy niche-directed one but those we deem for “frivolistas”. The more “human” (i.e. dummer?) the subject, the more readers. Even our smarter clients and colleagues seem to prefer those. Who knew?!

Agreed, Mr. Jim Connolly. Mistressfully written (notice how I didn’t use the masculine word “master” but the mistress part sounds less powerful? UGh, lest I digress).

On point, all blogging is about finding that balance between one’s own needs and the readers’. It’s fun to work toward that equilibrium. I have found that it is making me more respectful of myself and others.

Great post~! I love it! Weirdness as your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)~! This will also help me explain to a customer why his site doesn’t come up 1st when Googling “Bob’s RV Repair”!
x0x
Anita @ModelSupplies

This is a great rephrasing of great business advice. So many people want to be the next massive thing and forget that being a key role player in a big market is more realistic, doable, and probably a lot more fun. I’d rather have an intimate conversation with a few people than be stuck in a crowded room with everyone throwing their business card at me.

This goes right into what you & Brian discussed in the First Step in Freelance X Factor Course – Dare to Be Different. If you revise it to include more articles from Copyblogger, I’d include this gem.

That being said, I’d also caution about people trying too hard to stand out. There’s the good kind of standing out (original/entertaining voice, new viewpoint on a common topic, etc.) but it can quickly become a train wreck. You want to avoid the whole ‘we’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing near you’ thing.

The start-up I’m building (Moneyledge) is entering into a fairly crowded market, but what we have found is that a lot of the start-ups that command this space have neglected their targeted market. Therfore, I think you can go after a market that is fairly large if you find that the current players have failed to stay connected with the community and their targeted market.

Analyze your traits, and especially quirks. Then go to an extreme with them. Combine traits for a uniqueness multiplier.

This is especially important when tackling a crowded niche. People love a certain topic, but they want something eye-catching, something fresh, something irresistible. And nothing is more of all of those than being extremely remarkable and unique.

Great advice on going for the big win by tackling the big niche, but then checking yourself to make sure you stand out and are as weird as possible. Something I constantly am pushing myself to go further with.

Best,
Oleg

PS. Congrats Josh on the shout out in the article. Very cool. Turning into a bigger fan of WSL every day.

@Oleg, IMO I would probably change that a little bit, not necessarily an amplified version of yourself, but an edited version of yourself. (If you amplified Naomi Dunford we’d all go deaf.) Selecting the bits and pieces to share, including a nice portion of the quirky or individual or weird or just interesting. By editing and selecting, the signal gets clearer and the message is more easily heard.

You point to an important flip side, which is that if you share everything, you just end up with noise soup.

After spending years on projects perhaps 10-12 people in the world care anything about (I’m not kidding, seriously), I chose WordPress as the next direction. It turns out with small topics, the markets are small and utterly dominated by established players. You get your big break when they… die.

WordPress has millions of downloads every year. There’s gotta be a niche here somewhere!

I agree, Dave, I think we get an unusually helpful comment crowd here. Pretty cool.

As I’ve heard Brian recount the history, the first thing he did was create solid cornerstone content with the Copywriting 101 series. Then very early he created the Viral Copy special report (you can still find it here on the site, just use the search box and it’ll pop up) and released it without asking for an opt-in. If I was in your shoes, I’d study both that and the Authority Rules report and figure out how to do something similar in your topic. Guest posting is also a very powerful strategy these days to start finding more eyes.

Stamina wins the race. Fifty percent of blogs are fallow because people give up. Some people don’t really like to write. Some people never find their true voice. Some people lose their passion or the subject, if they ever had it.

Who will be blogging about blogging in two or five years? And of those who are still writing, how many of them won’t be recycling the same old concepts?

I’ve been amazed at how long the search lists are and how far down the list some people will go for search phrases like “roach headdresses” or “Lutheran baptismal banners.” It would be hard to write a lot about either of these topics, yet both have been mentioned oodles of times. I think your advice to be a unique voice on a broader topic is dead on target.

Thank you for this. As someone who is always striving to please everyone, I’m finding even more incentive to ditch that schtick.

I was surprised to see the video recently from Blog World Expo. Sonia’s pink hair took my breath away and made me smile (devilishly).

I write a parent education blog and continuously play with pleasing everyone (i.e. providing a resource for every parent) vs. putting some parents off. But, a recent post that “seemed harsh” for some parents did get a LOT of comment action.

It’s an interesting process to find my own voice (sing my own tune) online. And you are absolutely right that when you let others define you they do mess it up.

Great article. It is funny. I am in a big pond in my offline business (tax accounting) and I have used these techniques. Most accountants are a little uptight and stuffy, have fancy offices and wear suits.
I have a comfy office, bring my dog to work and wear jeans.
It works great offline, I guess I’ll have to bring the same attitude to my blogs and see how it work!

Thanks Sonia for another great post, I think its all about finding your own unique voice and not been scared to use it. We are all passionate about something and we all have unique insights that we can share.

Nicely put Sonia. Folks often find themselves doubting that they can use their odd traits, wierd thoughts and dorky behaviour to differentiate themselves – they second guess who they are or who they should make themselves appear to be.

For me, confident blogging is about sweeping away those expectations – the expectations you have of yourself, the expectations you have about others and the expectations you have around what other expect of you – and just doing what comes naturally.

Really good post, it is so important to stand out when you are competing against so many people, and the advice you give is great. The key to standing out is definitely being different and although you are fundamentally saying the same as others, it is more interesting to find those blogs that portray it in a different way.

This is excellent advice. I’ve been reevaluating my approach to blogging because I bought too many domains and started too many blogs. A couple years later, it’s time to simplify, and I’ve had a heck of a time narrowing myself down to one category.

But this post opens up new possibilities I hadn’t considered. Rather than something no one has done, what about a more personalized segment of something a lot of people are doing?

“It’s not about you. And it’s totally about you. If you can learn to keep both of these in your head at the same time, you’ll do brilliantly.”

This jumped out with flashing neon lights. Thank you, Sonia; the post and the comment dialogue came at a good time. What you say makes so much sense; getting that balance is crucial. Sometimes blogging can feel like swimming in a vast ocean with no land in sight; a cosy pond sounds just about right today.

Janice, I know, it’s funny, about every other day I give one of those two pieces of advice. Obviously they seem contradictory, but they need to be brought together if the content’s really going to work.

Was on my reader and aside from Yaro Starak’s blog, this one of the few that I read 🙂 Thanks for this confident building post. I do find the small but unique fish in a big pond a fascinating and useful thought as it goes against the grain of the traditional find-a-really-really-specific-niche then go for i it method.

That’s why I blog about being a substitute teacher, because there’s an audience starving for information about such a fascinating subject. Who are those amazing teachers who are adored by students?

Okay, I blog about it because I didn’t find too many other blogs on the subject, my days are zany, and I figured a few people might be interested. I’m not selling anything. I get a new follower here and there, which I’m grateful for.

weird? I can TOTALLY do that! …BIG pond? ‘got that covered. …niche in a big pond, we are SO there. But Sonia, ridiculously evolved? I just don’t know that I can GET there. It makes me think I have to be four handed with the ability to handle two keyboards and be so self-aware as to have all of my ‘issues’ packaged and tied in a nice bow. …I’d need at LEAST another 20 yrs of therapy for that. I think I need a middle ground. Can I just be moderately evolved? Like chimp to human instead of amoeba to giraffe? But seriously, great insight. Thank you!

I have to get off your blog now … your writing and ease of turning a phrase is making me feel inferior. 🙂 It’s just your stuff is very readable, darn it. Love the idea about being weird (aka being yourself!). My challenge is being interested in so many things … picking a wave in the crowded market … takes time to work out which wave to surf. Love your work Brian.

Sound advice there though I would not discourage from off beat niches. Yes, you may need multiple sites to make financial picture work but that’s called diversification. All it takes is for Google to Pandalize your one great amazing blog and you’re toast.

Ya gotta dance with who brung ya. See? I can do weird … spelling, that is. About as weird as I get. To put it another way, “write what you know.” Or, “write what you want to be known for.” Your blog should be based around your special abilities to solve somebody else’s problem. If you have expertise in solving infestations of naked mole rats, or in cuisine that involves them, or maybe in breeding them (or all three) then you would indeed write about naked mole rats. Ditto for financial planning. A blog should be about what you know … with the secondary filter being what other people want to know about.